Cats

Weekend Cat Blogging: Luna discovers iPad game for cats

I recently downloaded an iPad game for cats by Hiccup for Luna to try out. For a cat that spends a lot of time surrounded by technology, including the iPad, she is quite reluctant to touch it, so I wasn’t quite sure how she would react.

The game features a little mouse that resembles a cat toy scurrying around the screen. When the cat (or human) hits the mouse, it emits a little squeak and the player receives points; and the process repeats. That’s it – very simple. I started it up for Luna, and she immediately went to tracking the mouse intently, her little head shifting back and forth in deliberate motions. Tentatively, after a while, she started to paw at it, and eventually managed to pounce on the mouse. She seemed to be quite enjoying it, though she was still a little nervous and often backed away from the device after a pounce.

Here a brief excerpt of her first day of playing:

This is really just a little diversion for both of us to enjoy together, Luna playing with a virtual toy that draws her attention, and my taking delight in watching her do so. But this is clearly a demonstration of user engagement in the app space, for both cats and humans. Sometimes simplicity wins out.

I set up the game again in the office/studio while writing this article, and managed to get a brief iPhone video of Luna’s play. As one can see, she has gotten a bit more confident, even aggressive with it.

This does not seem to be a good game to play a small cluttered space.

Weekend Cat Blogging #321 is hosted by Pam with Coco, Patchouli and Smudge at Pam’s Sidewalk Shoes.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this Sunday by CAT SMRT.

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Weekend Cat Blogging will be hosted here at CatSynth next weekend, so do check then and submit your cat-related blog posts. New participants are always welcome.

Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt: Korg MS-20 Patch

The theme for this week’s combined Weekend Cat Blogging and Photo Hunt is Patch. We at CatSynth have an alternative take on the theme, as Luna poses with a Korg MS-20 patch on the iPad:

As a bonus, the app’s simulated interface features patch cords. They’re a little challenging to manipulate on the screen, but the make for nice visuals.

Appropriately for an iPad-centric post, Weekend Cat Blogging #320 is hosted by Meowza at his blog iMeowza.

Photo Hunt 275 is hosted by tnchick. This week’s theme is Patch.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this Sunday by Nikita and Elvira at Meowsings of an Opinionated Pussycat.

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Ketzel, Feline Composer, Dies at age 19

Sad news about a feline composer, from the New York Times:

Ketzel, who won a prize for piano composition in 1997 and went on to be featured in a book, “The World of Women in Classical Music,” died Wednesday in Manhattan. She was 19 and lived on the Upper West Side.

Ketzel was a black-and-white cat.

In the article you can see a picture of Ketzel (whose name means “cat” in Yiddish), and a recording of her one composition, Piece for Piano, Four Paws. It is descending pitch-wise, but has a good sense of timing with a “beginning, middle and end.” The work was transcribed by one of Ketzel’s humans, Morris Moshe Cotel, who retired as chairman of the composition department at the Peabody Conservatory in 2000 and became a rabbi. It would be interesting to see, and even perform the score of Ketzel’s piece at some point.

Her piece one an award in the Paris New Music Review’s One-Minute Competition, and led to exchange between Professor Cotel and Allan Forte, with this observation:

long the way, Professor Cotel said he realized that Ketzel’s “exquisite atonal miniature” used only 10 pitches of the chromatic scale. “The two missing pitches are G natural and B-flat” — the opening notes of Domenico Scarlatti’s famous Fugue in G minor, known as the “Cat’s Fugue.”

Our thoughts go out to Ketzel’s surving human, Aliya Cheskis-Cotel.

CatSynth 5th Anniversary!

Today we mark the 5th Anniversary of CatSynth!

I started this site on July 19, 2006 as a novelty when a friend and former colleague at E-MU systems suggested that I “should make a website about cats and synths.”

Every anniversary we feature the photo of Luna from the inaugural post.

I still have that Novation keyboard, though it does not get used as often of late. Luna of course still is very territorial about that beanbag chair. Times have changed a bit, here is an iconic photo of Luna from this past year, this time with an iPad app (in this case, the Smule Magic Piano):

Another quirky way we like to celebrate is with statistics. First the basics:

1559 posts.
0.85 posts per day.
8784 comments.
5.63 comments per post.
476 posts featuring cats and synthesizers.
195 reviews (and gig reports).
381,735 visitors.

Even after five years, people from around the world continue to send us pictures of cats and music gear. These days most of those come via our Facebook, which together with twitter has become a major way people engage with this site.

From Google Analytics (which we finally got working properly over the past year), here is an overview of where our visitors come from around the world.

By far and away most of our visitors are from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom, Canada, India, Australia, France and Germany. I’m gratified to see so many visitors from India, though I’m curious why we never receive any comments from there…

It’s also interesting to look at cities.

Not surprisingly, the top cities are San Francisco and New York. In Google, it’s SF followed by NYC, while in Facebook, New York is the top city.

Our most popular posts judged by number of visitors are the annual endangered wild cats on earth day.  Over the past year, our most commented posts were:

Wordless Wednesday: Herman (Groundhog Day) 35
Wordless Wednesday: Doll and Metal Beams 28
Wordless Wednesday: 6506 (Baker Beach) 27
Wordless Wednesday: Matzoh Man 27
Happy Birthday Luna! 25
Wordless Wednesday: 7643 (New York, Late Autumn) 25
Wordless Wednesday:  Wet Paint 25
Wordless Wednesday: Mosaic with Saxophones 24
Wordless Wednesday: Summer Solstice 24
Wordless Wednesday:  Harrison Street Hipstomatic 23

Our top commenters the past year:

Kitty 199
Mickey, Georgia and Tillie 146
Gattina 94
CatSynth 90
The Chair Speaks 66
meowmeowmans 65
Snowcatcher 56
AVCr8teur 51
Daisy the Curly Cat 48
Cats of Wildcat Woods 41
Beth @ 990 Square 40

Thanks to all our friends (in time zones earlier than U.S. Pacific Daylight Time) who already sent in comments for the anniversary, and to the Cat Blogosphere for their anniversary shout-out!

And while we will continue to keep doing what we do, it has been more of a challenge over this past year to keep up with posts, especially the longer-form reviews. There is a trade between doing music and art, and writing about people doing music and art. But I still love doing everything here, and will find a way…